Billy Campbell Won't Return For The Killing's Season 3

The Killing has been resurrected from the dead and will return for another season, but it will be doing so without one of its big names. The AMC series that was cancelled and then brought back, allegedly thanks to a streaming deal with Netflix, will get a third season minus Billy Campbell, who plays Seattle’s mayor in the series.

Campbell was Darren Richmond in the first two seasons of The Killing, a city councilman who is considered a suspect in the murder of a young girl and is elected Mayor after having been paralyzed. He will be exiting the series for reasons unknown, but he does have some other big things on tap, including playing Abraham Lincoln in NatGeo’s upcoming Killing Lincoln. He’ll also spend more time in the Civil War era in the 2013 film Copperhead, which also stars Peter Fonda. These roles may have contributed to his decision to leave the series.

Meanwhile, Variety says he isn’t he only one who is headed out the door. Brent Sexton and Michelle Forbes, who played the parents of the murdered girl, are apparently out, as well. Oppositely, Mereille Enos and Joel Kinnaman, who play two Seattle cops investigating the murder, are set to return for the third season, so the show won’t need an entirely new cast. The drama is currently in the process of planning for the new season and will have some work to do in order to adjust for the actors who are departing.

The Killing was cancelled in May but given a second chance when negotiations for a deal with Netflix to pay for part of the production costs started up. The third season should air on AMC sometime in 2013 and will follow on Netflix soon after.